Home again cont

“And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”

From Upstream: Selected Essays

by Mary Oliver

I wanted to post some shots from the trip home. The roads were good and there was a lot of hoar frost transforming the landscape. We also saw lots of animals most I did not get photos of. We saw Pronghorns which I mentioned last post. A deer had just crossed the road as we went through. We also saw Snowy Owl, a coyote, partridges and two unusual sights, the first a Red fox amid a cloud of crows. The second a Bald Eagle with Magpies. I thought in both cases they were being mobbed but Helen though they had a been feeding from the same road kill. It was a vey blue and white day.

The combination of moving car and moving animal rarely make for a stellar photo. But I have including it because I was really surprised to see a Bald Eagle here. We were heading towards the tiny badlands town of Dorothy Alberta at the time. I did not realize that this portion of the Red Deer River Valley had Bald Eagles.

Road Trip # 1

"Which of the horses

we passed yesterday whinnied

all night in my dreams?

I want that one."

from Stories from Kansas

by William Stafford

Is this the lineback dun so beloved of Louis L'Amour characters?

"Blue heaven and brown earth compel me.      I wander as a child at play. What was it, little sparrow, tell me,      That made me grieve so yesterday? "

from A May Song

by Archibald Lampman

	20

The Fly-away horse

"Oh, a wonderful horse is the Fly-Away Horse 

Perhaps you have seen him before;

Perhaps, while you slept, his shadow has swept

Through the moonlight that floats on the floor. 

For it's only at night, when the stars twinkle bright, 

That the Fly-Away Horse, with a neigh 

And a pull at his rein and a toss of his mane, 

Is up on his heels and away!" 

from The Fly-away horse

by Eugene Field

Horse in the Country

"On the high prairie

are only horse and rider

wind in dry grass

clopping in silence under the toy mountains"

from The Cariboo Horses

by Al Purdy

Laraine's horses

More snow last night but let's fire up the Tardis for a trip back in time. From November, Laraine's horses. And one of my favourite poems by one of my favourite poets.

"To-night the very horses springing by

Toss gold from whitened nostrils. In a dream 

The streets that narrow to the westward gleam 

Like rows of golden palaces; and high 

From all the crowded chimneys tower and die 

A thousand aureoles. Down in the west 

The brimming plains beneath the sunset rest, 

One burning sea of gold."

from Winter Evening

by Archibald Lampoon

Caution Horses

"But I've got a horse out in the country

I get to see him every second Sunday

He comes when I call him,

Yeah, he knows his name

One day I'll saddle up

And the two of us will ride away"

from A Horse in the Country

from the song by The Cowboy Junkies

Time to bring this blog back to what it was meant to be, a celebration of nature and poetry. A reaffirmation of life and a buffer between a world that is to much with us.

One of our friend Laraine's horses.

These books came today and I am chuffed, I see the complete poems as a record not just of his best poetry as his collected poems are, but as a record of the fullness of his career and his life. A.R. Ammons was a poet of so many things, the weather, the seasons, time, motion, shapes, forms, the changing natural world and the ultimate inconsequential reality of the individual in a vast universe. 

"We praise the mind for

how high it goes

without losing hold

and how wide

it goes without

blurring

and for how sharply it can 

relish a particular

without losing the 

dispositions in this

fine war-zone

between the great energies,

this narrowing that 

allows life's widest play, "

from For Robert Penn Warren

by A.R.Ammons

"On the high prairie

are only horse and rider

                 

 wind in dry grass

clopping in silence under the toy mountains

dropping sometimes and

                  lost in the dry grass

                  golden oranges of dung"

from The Cariboo Horses

by Al Purdy

"Which of the horses

we passed yesterday whinnied

all night in my dreams?

I want that one."

from Stories from Kansas

by William Stafford

"Animals that knew the way to Heaven

wagged at the back doors of every house

when I was young, and horses told fences

the story of Black Beauty, and smelled of the good manger."

from When I Was Young

by William Stafford

"Which of the horses

we passed yesterday whinnied

all night in my dreams?

I want that one."

from Stories from Kansas

 

 

More photos from our trip in Oct. these are our friends horses.

 All the quotes are from William Stafford's

Stories That Could Be True New and Collected Poems.

 

"While the earth breaks the soft horizon

eastward, we study how to deserve

what has already been given us."

from Love in the County

"The wild keeps telling us something 

we want to pass on to the world:

Even far things are real.

from Whispered into the Ground

  

   "I love the way the light falls over the suburbs
Late on these summer evenings, as the buried minds
Stir in their graves, the hearts swell in the warm earth
And the soul settles from the air into its human home.
This is where the prodigal began, and now his day is ending
In a great dream of contentment, where all night long
The children sleep within tomorrow’s peaceful arms
And the past is still,"

from  In The Park

by John Koethe

Walking the dogs thru the neighborhood or cutting

roses in the garden in the summer reminds me of

childhood summers with their green lawns, gentle

breezes and almost endless twilight. 

The passages in these poems spoke to those feelings and if

Koethe later changes the mood of his poem with the

habitual, pessimistic, qualifications I find frustrating in

his work, for me the (lovely) damage was already done

and I chose to focus on the evening light, the stillness and

the children asleep in tomorrow's peaceful arms.

the Garden

the Pond

As someone nearing 60 who still has my childhood

copy of Black Beauty. how could I not include this stanza

from Stafford's poem.

"Animals that knew the way to Heaven

wagged at the back doors of every house

when I was young, and horses told fences

the story of Black Beauty, and smelled of the good manger."

from When I Was Young

by William Stafford

 

 

 

 

"We could go there and live, have a place,
a shoulder of earth, watch days
find their way onward in their serious march
where nothing happens but each one is gone.
Some people build cities and live there;
they hurry and shout. We lie on the earth;
to keep from falling into the stars we reach
as wide as we can and hold onto the grass."

from East of Broken Top

William Stafford

We have been on a short trip to the cabin to build a dog run

so Shaun and Whateley can join us on our next trip. Our 

journey took us thru a short stretch of the Badlands along

the Red Deer River.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badland

The Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and

 clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. ( from link above )

The Badlands around the Drumheller area are especially well known for the extensive

 fossil beds that have been found there and is home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/

Then we stopped in the HandHills to visit our friends Laraine and Tim.

A visit as always characterized  by great hospitality, beautiful vistas, 

happy white dogs Andi below and Yogi a pair of Akhash-Maremana 
crosses,

and of course Laraine's beautiful horses.

One of my favorite flowers the Prairie Crocus were in evidence.

Here in a bad photo Yogi walks thru a bed of them on top

of a nearby esker.

They had so much snow this winter Tim had to extend

the fences to keep the horses from walking over them on the

drifts.

The snowdrifts also allowed the Snowshoe Hares and the 

Mountain or Nuttall's Cottontails to climb over the fencing

and get at the fruit trees.

Here in a low area Tim indicates the damage 

they were able to do to the poplars, yes the 

snow got very deep.

The White Crowned Sparrows were in evidence 

and the prairie landscape was  stunning. 

 

 

"Now, in the middle of a limpid evening,

The moon speaks clearly to the hill.

The wheatfields make their simple music,

Praise the quiet sky.

And down the road, the way the stars come home,"

 

from Evening

Thomas Merton